NPC Memes and the Next Gender

Malcolm and Simone analyze the bizarre TikTok trend of women acting like NPCs and eating viewer-sent emojis. They discuss pioneers like Cherry Crush and Pinkie Doll who understand internet psychology. Malcolm argues this caters to semi-males with lower testosterone, not sexual release. The content infantilizes male sexuality through repetition and predictability. Simone wonders if environmental estrogen is creating new gender expressions, not just sexualities. They debate the effects on young people and humanity's future.

Transcription

Simone: [00:00:00] This is not

Malcolm: content that is meant to be masturbated to. This is content that's meant to be passively consumed. For longer periods of time, I think that type of content may explicitly be appealing to this new type of man who has much lower testosterone and hasn't fully differentiated into a male.

Malcolm: Wow. That is what I think is really interesting here is it's actually like porn. But for the next generation

Would you like to know more?

Simone: hello, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I am so excited to be talking to you today because we're going to do something new. We're going to try to do something at least semi topical because we've talked about doing this for a while. And this is on this meme that's been going around.

Malcolm: Of this new style of video within TikTok. And we will have some examples of it play here.

Cherry Crush: , crunchy corn, [00:01:00] yum, yeehaw, um, pizza, yum, um, ice cream, um, um, um, yum, um, bread, yum.

Cherry Crush: Mmm, yum. I'm hungry. Crunchy corn, yum.

Malcolm: The two most prominent people doing this are Cherry Crush and somebody named Pinkie Doll. What I want to get into with this is what is really going on here? Cause I think a lot of people are just looking at this and being like, this is absurd.

Malcolm: This is

Simone: weird. This makes me sick. That's a really common response. I'm like,

Malcolm: this is a sign of the degradation of our society. But I actually think that there's a more interesting phenomenon here than that, and the people who are getting engaged with this as content producers, [00:02:00] especially these early people have shown themselves to be incredibly astute, intelligent, and understand aspects of the human condition that we may not have full access to.

Malcolm: I also think this might represent a change in human biology that we've been seeing with drops in testosterone and stuff like that, which is something I'm really excited to dig deeper into. But first let's talk about, I guess I'll start with Cherry Crush. Okay. Because I think it's easy to look at this person and because what she's doing is ridiculous, assume that she doesn't.

Malcolm: Like that she's incompetent or something like that, or she's just your standard, like e thought, but she's actually been at the forefront of several online phenomenons in a way that's allowed her to monetize them. So two other online phenomenons that she was at the forefront of and has done quite well within one is the ASMR movement.

Malcolm: You're familiar with [00:03:00] ASMR. Do you want to talk to that to some extent? Yes.

Simone: ASMR involves riffing on. A genuine kind of tickling feeling that you can get, or tingling feeling that you can get from certain subtle sounds. So examples of ASMR are people like... On wrapping delicate things, brushing hair, there's a lot of like overlap between ASMR and also like really childhood like comforting things.

Simone: So some ASMR videos are like, I'm going to do your makeup or I'm going to brush your hair or I'm going to tuck you in at night. Like it's very infantilizing. And I think that there might be some element of it, but that is independent from the fact that for some people. These delicate ASMR sounds, whispered, tapping, et cetera can elicit a kind of like tingling down your spine feeling.

Simone: Okay.

Malcolm: So this is really interesting because I think this is something we actually see cross species in species with really advanced. auditory cortexes. So in birds and stuff like that, you will see them involuntarily begin to dance. And there's great carrots and [00:04:00] stuff involuntarily dancing.

Malcolm: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm: And whenever a sensory system is advanced enough, it appears to be able to fire in weird ways with certain types of complex stimuli. I suspect that this system is very similar to the way you get a positive feeling with, we've got these in our house, these head things that you put on your head to slowly go over.

Malcolm: Yes, those things. But or really gently rubbing fingers across somebody's skin. What you're doing in both of these scenarios is you're very gently stimulating a large amount of a person's sensory system. And I think we call these sexual feelings because we don't have a way of engaging with them outside of sexuality.

Malcolm: We're

Simone: never gonna get monetized. We've never made it through an episode where I feel like there's [00:05:00] not something that demonetizes

Malcolm: us. No, with super, with supernormal stimuli, right? Yeah. You wouldn't find it in a normal environment, but that represents more of a type of simulation than that system's going to get naturally.

Malcolm: And because whenever somebody is just trying to feel an emotion at a maximum context, the way that we contextualize that is almost always sexual. We sometimes have trouble fully appreciating that these systems are not necessarily sexual. They're not actually reproduction.

Simone: I was just reading some studies this morning about oxytocin levels in different ape groups, and they definitely found that. Yeah, sure. Sexual interaction would increase oxytocin levels in among eight populations, but so would grooming behavior. So if we're picking lice off of each other and, brushing our fingers through each other's hair, very similar to what you're talking about, that also is increasing oxytocin levels, this level of bonding, this level of like pleasure as well.

Simone: So you're totally right. And it is. It is so [00:06:00] close to sexual, but it's not sexual. And I think that's, with ASMR, people are talking a lot about Oh no, this is definitely a sex thing. This is definitely, and there are ways you can make it sexy for sure. But it's not by definition sexy.

Malcolm: Exactly. So I think that Take that aside. So one, she is on the forefront of new movements with how the internet has learned to engage different aspects of that an individual might be trying to masturbate,

Simone: right? To feel good. You don't have to use that word constantly. To feel good in a nonproductive way.

Malcolm: Another word because feeling good doesn't properly capture what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, Somebody is trying to maximally engage an emotional stimuli system using supernormal stimuli. That's...

Simone: That is a mouthful. Okay. We'll find a better word.

Malcolm: So next another area where she gained a lot of prominence early on is she was one of the first people to really...

Malcolm: engage fully [00:07:00] with, in pornography, anime like characters.

Simone: Oh, so she does like OnlyFans style stuff too?

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